


The Shifting Worlds

by rosecake



Category: Emerald City (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Silent Hill Fusion, Gen, Gore, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-08 12:39:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12254556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosecake/pseuds/rosecake
Summary: All Dorothy wanted was the chance to talk to her birth mother. Instead, a tornado tears her away from her home and drops her in a town that turns into a nightmare after dark.





	The Shifting Worlds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Teaotter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teaotter/gifts).



Karen opened her mouth. She'd spent so long separated from Dorothy, the girl she still thought of as her child despite everything, and now that they'd been reunited there were so many things she desperately wanted to say if only she could make her voice work. But there was blood in her lungs, and when she opened her mouth, she couldn't make the words come out.

"Karen?" said Dorothy, her voice full of panic. She pressed something to the wound in Karen's side, and it hurt, but not as much as it probably should have. Karen was starting to lose feeling. It was seeping out of her, along with her blood. "Karen, what happened?"

Karen inhaled, trying to get enough air into her lungs to let her speak. She had so many things she wanted to say, but right now she had to focus on what was most important.

"Don't trust anyone in Silent Hill," she said.

"What?" said Dorothy. She was confused, of course she was confused. Karen should have explained everything to her years ago, but she'd hoped she'd never have to. And now it was far too late. "What's Silent Hill? Is it a place? Is that where I'm from?"

"I can hear the sirens," said Karen. They were so loud they were impossible to ignore. She'd gotten a trailer far enough from town that she never had to hear the tornado sirens, so there was only one thing the sound could signify. "They're coming for you, Dorothy. Don't trust them."

"Look, I have to go get help. I have to go, but I promise I'm going to be back. I promise, okay?"

It was the last thing she said to Karen before the storm took her away. 

*

Dorothy woke up in the smashed remains of the police car she'd taken refuge in, the police dog barking its head off behind her. She was cold, there was glass everywhere, and she could feel blood trailing down her forehead from some wound on her scalp.  But, most importantly, she was alive. The last thing she remembered was the tornado bearing down on her, and even with all her aches and pains, she was amazed that the car had been enough to save her from it.

She'd landed in the woods somewhere, and she had no idea how that had happened, because woods and heavy fog weren't really things she associated with Kansas. Still, she was too excited about being alive to worry about it much.

Her excitement lasted right up until she got out of the car and saw the dead woman crushed underneath it.

"Oh, God," she said, tripping over a root and falling to the ground as she tried to back away.

Dorothy was a nurse, she should at least try to render aid, but the woman was clearly already dead. The blood from her injuries had left dark stains against the brighter red of her dress, and even at a distance it was clear that the woman was beyond any help Dorothy could offer her. She couldn't make herself get any closer to the body just to confirm it. It was bad enough just looking at her.

The blood reminded her of Karen, and Dorothy wondered what had happened to her after the tornado. And about what had happened to her in that storm shelter before Dorothy ever got there.

The dog was still barking at her from inside the car, so Dorothy forced herself to focus on the one living thing around her.  

"Come on, dog," she said, opening the door to let it out. "Let's go find help."

She rooted around the car before she left, because she had no idea how close to civilization she was. There was a jacket, which she was grateful for, and a first aid kit. There was a gun, too, and she hesitated for a second before she shoved it in her bag as well. Who knew what was in these woods? Better to take it than to miss it later.

It didn't take her to long to make it through the trees and to the road, and from the road she was relieved to be able to see a town in the distance.

She'd find the police and tell them about the dead woman, and then hope they believed her about the tornado even though she wasn't really sure she believed _herself_ about the tornado. She didn't understand what had happened at Karen's trailer, either, and being so far from it she was starting to wonder if she'd hallucinated everything. Maybe she'd hit her head too hard during the storm.

There was a sign at what must have been the town border, one that said _Welcome to Silent Hill_ in big bright letters, so big she could read it long before she got anywhere near it.

A cold tremor went up her spine as Karen's warning rang through her head. _Don't trust anyone in Silent Hill._ Beside her, the dog whimpered.

She reached down to ruffle the dog's fur. "Don't worry, it's going to be okay," she said, and she wasn't sure if she was trying to reassure the dog or herself.

She was injured, hungry, and tired, and had she had no idea of where she was or how close the next town would be if she turned around and went in the other direction. She'd been walking for ages and hadn't seen a single car go by, so they had to be pretty far out in the country. So, despite her unease, Silent Hill was her only choice.

*

Every inch of East hurt. It felt like the only the tight fabric of her dress was keeping her shattered insides in place, and with every step she took her organs threatened to shift and spill out of her. Still, it would take a lot more than a car crash to kill a witch of the Order. East only had to last until the shift, until the Dark World slid into town, and then she'd be able to stitch herself back together again. West and her girls would help. She'd be back to normal in barely any time at all.

And then she'd figure out who'd done this to her, and she'd tear them into pieces.

The sky turned an ugly shade of green as she drew closer to town line, leaving a trail of blood behind her to mark her passing. Night was falling, and the shift would come shortly after. She could feel in her bones, just as surely as an incoming storm. She was only a few feet past the sign when the sirens went off, that one warning the weak got to take cover before the nightmares rushed in. She sighed, blissful. She was not one of the weak.

She was one of the nightmares, and she could feel her strength flowing back into her as the sirens wailed.

In the distance, she could hear a dog barking, upset by the sirens. She tilted her head, listening for the noise. It had been a long time since she had heard the noise of a living animal in Silent Hill, and she was drawn to it. She held her hands out, and from the chaotic power of the Dark World she pulled her cleaver to her.

The blade was dull red, rusted and filthy from the remains of the people she'd ripped apart with it. Her plans had changed when she heard the dog. She wasn't going to head for the hospital now. She didn't her sister's help so badly anymore. No, she was going to get her revenge first.

She could tell the girl was a stranger even from the back of her. It was a small town, and it had been shuttered away from the rest of the world for decades now. Maybe centuries. It was hard to keep track of the passage of time from inside it. East knew every face, every living soul and every dead one that lived in Silent Hill. The girl was a stranger, an interloper. East's lips curled back into a grimace.

Nothing good ever came from interlopers.

"Stop," said East. She dropped her cleaver, let it drag agains the asphalt, and the girl turned in surprise at the screeching noise.

"Oh, God," said the girl when she turned around. Like she was surprised to see East still upright. Like she'd really believed her weak murder attempt had been successful.

East advanced on her, her cleaver still dragging on the ground, throwing up sparks as she walked.

"I'm sorry," said the girl, backing away as East drew closer. "I'm so sorry, I thought you were dead. I wouldn't have left you there if I'd known you were alive." She stumbled as she walked backwards, but she managed to keep her feet.

"You thought you were strong enough to kill me?" said East. The arrogance was galling, but that wasn't surprising. Interlopers were like that. Nobody ever understood the power of the Order until they were shown it. "Me, a witch of the Order? A Cardinal Daughter?"

"What? No! I didn't meant to hit you with the car, I'm so sorry. I wasn't even driving it, it was the storm," she said, as if her endless babbling were going to be enough to save her. "I don't know where I am, I just want to get home. Please, I just want to be left alone."

"You should have thought of that before you came here," said East. "We don't like outsiders."

"I didn't even mean to come here!" screamed the girl. She fumbled with her bag, pulling out a gun, and East laughed. She'd been shot dozens of times. Handguns didn't even really hurt anymore. "I just want to leave, as soon as I can."

"Nothing ever leaves Silent Hill," said East. There was blood coming out of her mouth, dripping down and onto her already red clothing as she spoke. The blood loss didn't bother her. There was a wellspring of it here, in the Dark World. The blood was unending. "Don't worry, though, I'm the most merciful of my sisters. I'll make sure you die quickly."

East lunged, and the girl only barely managed to bring the gun up in time to fire.

The cleaver went skidding across the ground as pain bloomed in East's chest. There shouldn't have been any pain. The girl had only shot her once, and even a full clip shouldn't have mattered. Not here, not now, not in the dark of the nightmare where East was at her most powerful.

 _Only a witch can kill a witch,_ thought East, right before life left her. 

*

Dorothy needed to find a police station. Or a hospital. Any place that could help, because she very desperately needed help.

The logical part of her mind told her than none of the walls were bleeding. That was just her guilty conscience twisting the shine of the nighttime condensation on the buildings she passed. She'd shot a woman, and even if it was in self-defense, killing a person still did a number on somebody's mental state. And the way the condensation smelled like old blood, like copper and rust and ozone, all that was just her guilty conscience too.

 _Don't trust anyone in Silent Hill_.

She almost jumped out her own skin at the sound of the sirens. They hadn't signaled anything good the last few times she'd heard them, and she didn't think it likely they signified anything good this time. The sirens didn't run for long before they stopped, though. And while the fog was rising again with the morning sun, at least in the light the buildings no longer looked like they were weeping blood.

Still, Dorothy was on her way out. She didn't care how far away the next town was, she could walk it, and then she could make her way home from there. She didn't want to stay in Silent Hill a second longer than she had to. 

She'd crossed through the town in the night without even realizing it, because there was town entrance sign in front of her, but it wasn't the one she'd original passed on the way in. This one had a man tied to it with barbed wire.

She approached him carefully, not sure if he was alive or dead, ready to run if he turned out to be someplace halfway between.

"Hello?" she said, her voice shaking. Her first, shameful instinct was to leave him and protect herself. She couldn't go through another round of horror after the woman in red. She jumped when he raised his head.

She was ready to run when he said, "Please." His voice was so hoarse she could barely hear him.

"Okay," she said, overruling her baser instincts. She had no idea who'd put him there, or why, and if they were planning to come back. But there was a gaping wound in his side, in addition to the damage done by the barbed wire, and she wasn't sure he'd survive until the next person came along.

"Do you know where we are?" she asked as she pulled carefully at the barbed wire. She wanted to get him down quickly, because she felt exposed staying out in the open, but she also wanted to avoid slicing her own skin open. "Do you know why this place is... well, like this?"

"I don't know. I can't remember anything," he said. She sighed. She was desperate for answers, and so of course she'd come across a man who couldn't provide any.

"The sign says this place is called Silent Hill," she said.

"The name doesn't ring any bells."

She pulled away the last of the barbed wire, and he slumped down into her arms. "Well, you need a hospital," she said. "I don't know where the nearest one is, though."

"No hospitals," he said. "I don't remember why, exactly, but I know not to go to the hospital."

"Right," said Dorothy.

He didn't have any answers for her, but he was also the first living person she'd seen in a while that hadn't tried to kill her, so she was willing to go along with him. She called him Lucas, because she was so homesick she couldn't think of anything else. Dorothy patched him up the best she could with her first aid kit, and he walked with her through the town. With the sun up, it was less frightening. It was still desolate, and eerie in the mist, but nothing like the nightmare it had been the night before.

"I know it sounds crazy," she said, supporting his weight as they walked, "but I could have sworn the walls were bleeding last night. There was a woman-" she said, and then stopped, because she wasn't sure if she was ready to confess that she'd killed a woman to a stranger.

"It doesn't sound that crazy," said Lucas.

She'd found him tied to a sign with barbed wire, so it probably _wasn't_ that crazy by the standards of the town.

They walked, and Dorothy had no real destination in mind. She only knew it felt safer to keep moving than to stay in one place. She saw people, but only out of the corner of her eyes, because they disappeared around corners or into deserted-looking buildings as soon as she noticed them. None of them stayed or came back when she called out to them.

"Things would be so much easier if someone would just let me use their phone," she said. Hers had gotten lost at some point during the storm, and she hadn't seen one in the cop car when she was rifling through it.

Lucas said something, something that she didn't quite hear. "What?" she asked.

Lucas collapsed onto his knees, panting heavily.

"Lucas!" she said, and his only response was a painful sounding moan. She slipped a hand underneath his jacket, to the wound that she'd tried to bandage up earlier, and felt blood on her fingers.

She should have forced him to a hospital as soon as she'd cut him down. "Okay, okay," she said, lifting him up and supporting him as best she could. It would have been easier if he weren't bigger than her. "You need a doctor whether you want one or not."

It took her ages, or at least if felt like ages, but she finally found the hospital.

"Hello," said a chipper girl at the front desk. She was wearing a nurse costume. Not scrubs, not like a real nurse, but the sort of starched white dress like you'd see a period movie. Not even like a historical nurse's dress, really, more like the kind of thing you'd wear on Halloween. She seemed calm and pleasant and in no real hurry to help even though Dorothy was dragging a half-dead man in with her. "Welcome to Our Lady of Solace."

Dorothy swallowed her unease. Even if Lucas could last until they found a more professional looking hospital, her legs were ready to give out underneath her. She couldn't carry him any further.

"He needs a doctor," Dorothy said. "He's got a deep laceration in his side, and I think he's coming down with an infection, too. He's got a fever."

"Oh, we can take care of that, no problem," said the nurse. She rang a bell, and a few similarly dressed girls came out to help take Lucas from Dorothy. Dorothy moved to follow them, but the girl from the front desk stopped her.

"Are you okay?" she asked. "You looked stressed. I can give you something for that," she said, holding out a pill in her hand.

"What is that?" asked Dorothy. Normal hospitals didn't hand out drugs like party favors. And nobody had said anything about her dog yet, which Dorothy was grateful for, but it was also strange that they were okay with having him inside even though he wasn't marked as a service dog. 

"PTV."

"Never heard of it," said Dorothy.

"We make it from poppies. It helps you forget things," said the girl. "Don't worry about it. Everybody in Silent Hill needs to forget things now and then. Otherwise you'll go crazy."

"No thank you," said Dorothy. She might be half insane already, but nothing about her situation was going to be improved by taking unsolicited drugs from a stranger. "I want to be with my friend."

The nurse shrugged at Dorothy's refusal. "Well, if you don't want any, that's fine," she said, popping the pill into her own mouth. "But at least let us clean you up."

Dorothy raised a hand to her forehead, where there was still caked blood from where the glass had hit her. There was blood from the woman she'd shot, too, and from where she'd tried to help Lucas. No wonder nobody in town would stop to talk to her, she must look like a walking disaster. She was filthy, and she hadn't slept in days.

"If I could just use a sink somewhere, that would be nice," she said. "But I want to see Lucas right after."

"Of course, of course," said the nurse. "Just follow me!"

*

The interloper, who had identified herself to the nurses as _Dorothy_ , was asleep. She probably hadn't meant to fall asleep, but there'd been sedatives in the water and food she'd been given, so the matter had been taken out of her hands.

Asleep, she didn't look very dangerous. But West's sister was dead, and there were only so many ways that something like that could have happened. A Cardinal Daughter of the Order couldn't be killed by many things. It took a witch to kill a witch, at least if you wanted death to stick. A witch of East's own level, not one their fawning acolytes. That didn't leave very many possibilities inside Silent Hill.

An outsider, though? The interlopers had brought disaster with them the last time they'd come. No reason to believe that this one would be any better.

"Time to wake up, dear," she said, and the girl's eyes fluttered open at the command.

She rose slowly, obviously still groggy from the medication.

"Who are you?" she asked. On the floor, the dog she'd brought in with her also woke at the sound of his master's voice.

"Hospital administrator," said West. She had a glass vial in one hand, one she'd already filed open, and she drew the clear liquid into the syringe in her other hand.

"What kind of hospital is this?" asked Dorothy. She sounded suspicious, as well she should.

"The only one in town, so I'd thank you to use a more appreciative tone."

"Sorry," said Dorothy. "I do appreciate everything you've done for me and my friend, but I'd like to go check up on him now."

Her friend, who West had identified as one of Glinda's men, although he seemed too out of it to remember his own allegiances. West had patched him up, but she still hadn't decided if she was going to send him back to Glinda whole or in pieces.

"In a minute, in a minute," said West. The syringe was ready to go, and she held it with her thumb resting on the plunger as she spoke. The girl seemed timid enough, but West wasn't going to fall for her act. "Now, how did you get yourself so banged up, anyhow?"

"There was an accident," said Dorothy. Vague and evasive, but West really hadn't expected her to be forthcoming. "But I feel fine now. If my friend is ready, I'd like to leave."

"Oh, I'm afraid I can't let you leave so soon. We're all about solace here, you understand? I can't just throw you out. I've got responsibilities. I'm the Daughter of the West," she said, and she could see Dorothy's eyes widen at the title.

Why Mother had decided that West of all people should be responsible for _solace_ was beyond her, but she'd been given her duties and she intended to fulfill them.

"There used to be a Daughter of the East, too, but she's dead now, so all of her obligations have fallen to me. It's an awful lot to deal with."

"I'm sorry for your loss," said Dorothy. West could hear the girl's heart pounding even at a distance. Dorothy stood carefully, as if she could ease past West without startling her. As if West hadn't seen right through her the second she'd seen her.

"Not as sorry as you're going to be," snarled West. She reached out and snatched Dorothy's arm, yanking it forward so she could plunge the needle in.

Dorothy screamed and lashed out with her fist, catching West on the side of her face and jerking her arm hard enough that the needle snapped off in her muscle. West laughed as Dorothy tore the broken needle out of her arm. The poppy had already gotten into her bloodstream, and night was coming. West could hear the sirens starting up.

"Don't worry!" screamed West as Dorothy fled the room, her dog fast at her heels. West could give chase, but why bother? The things that came out in the hospital at night were worse than anything she could come up with on her own. "You might have survived your first night in Silent Hill, but you're not going to survive a night in this hospital!"

*

Dorothy's heart raced as she ran down the hallway. The pounding of her heartbeat was so loud in her ears that it drowned out everything else, even the sirens, and she wasn't sure if it was normal fear or if whatever was in the shot she'd been given was killing her. She made it to the staircase and down to the first floor, and then she started knocking in doors as she made her way down to the exit. 

"Lucas?" she screamed, not sure if she was doing the right thing.  She wasn't even sure if Lucas was alive or not. She should run, as quietly and as quickly as she could, and save herself, because there was no way she was going to be able to save the both of them. But even though running would be the smart thing to do, she couldn't make herself leave him, not after all she'd already done to save him. 

He was in the fifth room she checked, laid out on a table, one of the nurses leaning over him.

The nurse turned to look at her when Dorothy barged in, her head jerking as if she'd been startled by the noise, except the nurse didn't have a face. The flesh on her head was warped, with thick twisted skin covering her eyes and mouth, and Dorothy screamed. It had to be whatever the West woman had given her, it had to be a hallucination, but she fumbled with her bag anyway, trying to get the gun out. She wasn't fast enough to stop the nurse from stabbing her arm with a scalpel, but she got a shot off before the thing could stab her a second time.

She got it right through the chest and the nurse - or the thing dressed like a nurse, she didn't even know what to call it - twitched on the floor as Dorothy stepped around it to get to Lucas.

"Lucas!" she screamed, and he shifted on the bed, rising up with a groan. "Lucas, we have to go!"

The thing on the floor was still moving, trying to stand even thought the wound should have been fatal. Its shoes kept slipping in the puddle of its blood on the linoleum floor, and that was the only thing that bought her enough time to get Lucas on his feet and moving. By the time they got to the hallway, there was a whole mob of faceless nurses in the hallway, shuffling towards her and blocking her from the exit. With no other choice, she pulled Lucas deeper into the hospital with her.

"There has to be another way out," she said. The sirens were still blaring, somehow sounding like they were coming from every direction at once, and she shouted to be heard over them.

Lucas put a finger to her lips. "They follow by sound," he said, so quietly that she barely heard him.

Around them, the walls were bleeding again. It was unmistakable this time. She felt feverish. Her head felt heavy, and whatever she'd been shot up with, it was working, slowing her movements. Maybe driving her mad.

"I think I'm going insane," she said. Maybe something had hit her on the head back in Kansas. Maybe she was dreaming all this, maybe it was all some kind of dying nightmare while she bled out on the floor next to her mother.

"You're not insane," said Lucas. "It's not you. It's this place."

*

They moved quietly through the hospital, looking for the exit, and towards the end Dorothy was so delirious that Lucas had to carry her. He didn't mind it. She'd done the same for him, even though he was a stranger to her, and he had no intention of abandoning her now that she needed him. He got them through until morning, until the sirens went off gain, and the hospital shifted back to a normal building with normal exits instead of endless corridors of blood and suffering and shuffling monsters.

Dorothy did better in the daylight, whatever drug she'd been given wearing off slowly but surely until she was talking coherently again. Even in daylight, they stuck to the shadows of buildings, not wanting to be seen. Who knew who could be trusted, and who wanted to kill them?

They tried to leave, but every road out of town just twisted around and lead them right back in again.

Lucas sighed at the sight of the town entrance sign again. They were stuck in a closed loop. "I don't understand how you got here in the first place," he said.

"There was a storm, a tornado," she said. "I was adopted, and I was going to meet my birth mother, but by the time I got to her trailer she'd been shot. She told me to stay away from Silent Hill, but the storm brought me right here. I have no idea why, or what this place is."

"I'm sorry I can't give you any answers," he said.

Dorothy sighed. "It's fine. It's not your fault anymore than it is mine. I just always wanted to know why she left me behind, you know? I just wanted to talk to her. And instead I ended up here."

"Do you think this is where she came from?"

"I don't know," said Dorothy. "But someone, somewhere, has got to know what's happening here. And someone has to know how we can leave."

"I saw a library not that far back," said Lucas. "We could see if there's anything useful there."

Dorothy frowned, and Lucas understood her hesitation. After the hospital, he was reluctant to let himself be trapped inside a building too. But they had to start somewhere.

"Well, we can't just walk around forever," said Dorothy. "Let's see if the library has any local history." 

*

Dorothy pulled the library door open hesitantly, half expecting a monster to lunge out at her from the other side. But there was nothing inside the library atrium but dust, so she slid inside quietly, Lucas and the dog following after.

It wasn't until she got inside that she realized the library wasn't entirely empty.

"Oh, hello," said a woman in glasses, her brown hair pulled tightly back from her face. "Are you new? That's strange. We usually don't get anyone new in the library. Well, really, we usually don't get anyone in the library at all."

Dorothy's hand was already on her gun, and she could feel Lucas tense beside her, but the dog only whined a little and then went up to the woman and nudged her hand with its nose.

"We usually don't allow pets inside, but seeing as you're the first people to stop by in years I suppose I can make an exception," she said, patting the dog on the head. "What's your name?" she asked the dog.

Dorothy let herself relax a little. The woman didn't seem threatening, and while appearances could be deceiving, she was also the first person Dorothy had met that the dog had responded well to. "I'm not really sure what his name is," she admitted. "Technically I'm just borrowing him."

"I used to have a dog just like him called Toto," said the woman, ruffling his ears. She looked back to Dorothy. "And who are you?"

"My name's Dorothy, and this is Lucas."

"How interesting. I used to know a Dorothy," she said. "My name's Jane. Dr. Jane Andrews, but just Jane is fine. What are you doing in Silent Hill?"

"I don't know," said Dorothy. "I was hoping to find out. I mean, I'm from Kansas, but I'm not even sure what state we're in now."

"Well, we're a long way from Kansas, I can tell you that," said Jane.

Jane held her hand out, and Dorothy reached out to shake it. Instead of shaking it, though, Jane grabbed it and twisted Dorothy's hand up to look at it.

"Hey," snapped Dorothy, trying to pull her hand back, wishing she hadn't let herself trust a stranger, but Jane had a firm grip on her hand.

"Oh," she said, running a finger over Dorothy's birthmark. "You aren't really new here at all, are you?"

"What?" said Dorothy, no longer trying to pull her hand away. "I've never been here before. I've never been outside of Kansas."

"Oh, no, you were born here," she said. "I should know. I'm your mother."

*

"We came here as a team," said Jane, once Dorothy had calmed down.

Once her daughter had calmed down. It felt so odd to think of her that way. The last time Jane had seen her, she'd been a baby, and for some reason Jane still thought of her that way, even knowing that surely time was passing normally outside of the distorted reality of Silent Hill. Still, as gratifying as it was to see her daughter grown, it was also alarming.

Karen had taken her away for a reason.

"This place wasn't always like this, but it was always strange," explained Jane. "The line between what is real and what is unreal is thin here. People can call on that, bend to it their will if they're strong enough. People used to be able to perform simple, low-level magic with it. A local cult, the Order, sprang up around harnessing that power. And we, your father and Karen and Frank and I, we came to study it."

Sirens wailed in the distance, and Dorothy looked alarmed, but Jane had already explained that the library was protected against the reality shifts. Dorothy didn't interrupt her. 

"We came to try and figure out what was going on, to see if we could harness that power, control the magic that seemed to flourish here. The Order agreed to help. Mother South wanted control too. The soft spot in reality had leant its power to people here for generations, but it was fickle and unreliable. It ebbed and flowed in a way that nobody really understood."

"So what went wrong?" asked Dorothy. "What turned the town into this nightmare?"

Jane sighed. "There's been a lot of arguing about what exactly happened. The corrupting influence of man, most likely. All we know for sure is that we lost control of something during the experiment. Hundreds of people died in the explosion when the experiment failed, and more died in the aftermath when reality broke apart. You've seen the Dark World, you know how bad it can get, but even during the day there's still something wrong with reality here. It's nearly impossible to leave.  It's like a black hole, it sucks you right back in."

"Nearly impossible," said Dorothy. "So there is a way to do it, then? We can leave somehow?"

There was so much hope in her voice. Jane sighed again. "Yes, but it's difficult. The cardinal witches have the strength to do it. The Mothers and the Daughters."

"Then how did Karen manage? Did she become a witch too?"

Jane shook her head. "It was Mother South. She died trying to hold the fabric of reality around this place together. The emergence of the Dark Wold was too much for her, though. It ripped her into pieces. Some pieces of her were buried around the town, in places like this library," said Jane, gesturing around. "That's the magic that keeps us safe at night. And one of those pieces ended up with Karen, and she used it to escape with you."

Dorothy was looking down at her hand, the tattoo they'd given her as a child still clear on her skin. "Why didn't she stay with me, after we escaped?" 

Jane shrugged. "She promised me she'd get you out of Silent Hill. She never promised me anything else. She must have thought you'd have a better chance of escaping the Order's notice if you were raised by other people." Jane hesitated for a moment, but she needed to know. "Were they kind people? The ones that raised you?"

"Very kind," said Dorothy softly. "The kindest anyone could ask for."

Jane exhaled. "That's good to hear," she said. "I just knew I didn't want you to die here."

"Why did Karen think the Order was going to come for me?"

"They weren't ever going to stop looking for you," said Jane. "Glinda's in charge of them now, and Glinda blamed us for the holes the experiment left in reality. For the nightmares. These days she keeps the breach from getting wider with sacrifices, with purifying fire. You were born right after the experiment, and you were born to interlopers, but you were still a child of Silent Hill. As far as Glinda was concerned, you were the perfect sacrifice. You were the one that was going to purify the whole town and stop the shifts into the Dark World. That was why she marked you for it," she said, pointing at Dorothy's hand.

Dorothy rubbed her tattoo. "You mean it's not a birthmark?" she asked, confused.

"No," said Jane. "The Order tattooed it on your skin as preparation for the sacrifice. Frank sold us out, you know. He offered you up in exchange for political power here. They were all so sure they could get things back to normal by burning you alive. That's why Karen had to take you and run. They were watching me, because they expected it from me."

"I ended up here anyway, though."

"Yes," said Jane. When she used to imagine seeing her daughter again, it was always after some fantasy of her managing to escape somehow. She'd never wanted Dorothy to wind up back in Silent Hill. Not even if it meant never seeing her again. "Silent Hill has a way of doing that. You can't run forever."

*

Jane - her mother, and Dorothy was still stuck on thinking of Karen as her mother, and of Aunt Em as her mother, she wasn't sure how many mothers she could handle at once - told her to get some sleep.

"You killed East, right?" said Jane. "You should have some of her power in you now, in addition to that piece of Mother South that helped you escape the first time. We'll figure out how to use it properly in the morning."

She laid down on the cot Jane had prepared for her, but she couldn't make herself sleep, even as tired as she was. Her mind was still reeling, trying to take in how much of her life and her history she had never known about.

"Did you get what you wanted?" asked Lucas. He spoke quietly, from across the room. The only one actually asleep was the dog, who she'd already started to think of as Toto.

"I'm not really sure yet," said Dorothy.

When she'd gone to talk to Karen, she'd expected some story about a bad relationship, or bad timing, or some other normal reason for giving up a child. She hadn't expected waking nightmares and cults who believed in human sacrifice. If she weren't covered in marks and bruises from the past few days, she'd be tempted to think she was just dreaming.

"Give it some time," said Lucas, and Dorothy nodded.

She'd almost drifted off into sleep when the doors to the library were thrown open hard enough to crack the glass. Dorothy reached for her gun as she rose, watching warily as West stepped in through the debris of the glass doors, several of her nurses behind her. They weren't monsters, they wouldn't be able to get through the library's protections if they were monsters, but they were armed.

"You can fight if you want to, but you're outgunned. The Mayor wants to see you, so I suggest you come along quietly, especially since darling Dorothy over there is the only he one he really wants alive."

Dorothy swallowed, and lowered her gun.

"Dorothy," said Lucas, quietly enough that West wouldn't be able to hear him.

"It's fine," said Dorothy, hoping that she wasn't lying to him. "I don't want anyone else to get hurt for me."

"Finally, some sensible decision making out of you," said West, gesturing her girls forward. One of them took Dorothy's gun, and the others made sure everyone's wrists were tightly tied together.

"I honestly don't understand why Glinda didn't burn down your little library ages ago," said West as she herded them through the town. They'd left Toto alone, and Dorothy was grateful that he was behaving himself and following them quietly, because she didn't want to see him shot. "We should've killed all of you interlopers off after all the damage you did."

"You're the one taking orders from the Mayor," said Jane, and West snarled and went silent after that.

They made their way to a building on the town's main street. Jane told her it was the City Council building. Lining the walkways in front were a dozen young women in old-fashioned blue dresses, ones that covered them from neck to ankles. They spoke to each other in urgent tones as West lead her captives into the building, but Dorothy couldn't make out any of what they were saying.

"I've come to see the Mayor," said West, blowing through them. "I assume one of you lot has already run off to tell Glinda what's going on, but if you haven't yet, I'd rather you didn't bother."

"She's on her way," snapped one of the girls in blue, and then she shrank back as West turned her attention on her.

"Oh, I'm sure she is! She does always like to stay one step ahead of the game," said West. "Maybe one of these days she'll let the rest of us in on the rules.  And go ahead and leave her outside," said West, pointing at Jane. "Nobody asked for her. Let's see how well she fares outside of her precious library when the shift happens."

"You can't-" started Dorothy, but she was silenced by West's fist.

"No speaking unless spoken to," said West as Dorothy spat blood out of her mouth. "You're here to be sacrificed for the greater glory of the Order. Nobody cares about your thoughts on the matter."

There was magic in Dorothy's mouth, holding her jaw tightly shut, preventing her from saying anything.

She ground her teeth as she followed West, until all of a sudden they were standing in front of a man in a loud suit. He had a full beard and slicked back hair, and he looked like the kind of man who was clearly taken with his own importance. Dorothy knew, without having to be told, that he was the Mayor. And from what Jane had said he was an interloper, like both her mothers. Behind him armed guards were fanned out across the room, their hands resting on their guns as West and her nurses entered.

He looked down at her strangely, different emotions warring on his face. "Dorothy?"

He didn't look like he wanted her sacrificed. Then again, both Jane and Karen had told her not to trust him. Not to trust anybody.

"It's her," said West for her. "Glinda's little sacrificial lamb back from wherever she fucked off to all those years ago."

The Mayor looked down at Dorothy, and then away from her. "We don't even know if Glinda's plan is going to work," he said, hedging. "There's power in her, even I can feel it. Why sacrifice all that for no reason?"

Dorothy didn't like being talked about as if she wasn't there, but her mouth was still magicked shut there wasn't much she could do about it. Lucas inched closer to her. 

"I don't think this is going to end well," he said quietly. Everyone else was too busy paying attention to the brewing fight between West and the Mayor to take much notice of him.

"Oh, don't try to weasel out on us now, you bastard," snapped West. "We let you live because you made _promises_. Promises that your men could find the girl again, could fix the damage you caused with your own two hands. But it wasn't even your people who found her, was it? I bet all this time you weren't even really trying."

She advanced as she spoke, her anger radiating off her and filling the room, and the Mayor's guards shifted, bringing the barrels of their guns up. West only laughed.  And why shouldn't she laugh? None of them were witches. Dorothy already knew that their guns weren't going to do much of anything to West. She wondered if the guards knew it too.

"You think you can walk in here and threaten me?" snapped the Mayor.

"The Order has what it wants," said West, gesturing back at Dorothy. "I hardly see why I need to listen to a damn thing you say anymore."

"Just wait for Glinda!" yelled one of the blue girls, but it was too late, and West had already lunged for the Mayor. His guards fired, but Dorothy had been right. Some of the nurses went down, but West didn't so much as flinch as the bullets went through her.

In the midst of the fighting the nurses that were holding her and Lucas let them go, too caught up in trying to properly fight the Mayor's guards to guard them at the same time. Lucas had somehow managed to get his hands free and he grabbed Dorothy, pulling her up off the floor and away from the line as fire as quickly as he could. A nurse noticed and tried to stop them, but she only managed to nick Dorothy with a scalpel before Toto was biting into her leg, dragging her off Dorothy.

Dorothy had Lucas grab her bag from where one of the nurses had dropped it as they ran. Hopefully her gun had been stashed inside it, although they didn't have time to stop and check.

When Dorothy turned to look at the scene behind her, West was crouched over the Mayor, her hands coated with his blood. The Mayor was unmoving.

Lucas dragged her away before she could see anything more.  

*

"Where do we go from here?" asked Lucas. He sounded terrible. She was sure she sounded just as bad. She couldn't remember the last time she'd slept properly, or eaten properly, or spent more than a few minutes not worried for her life. Worse, they hadn't seen Jane since they'd escaped from the City Council building, and Dorothy had no idea what had happened to her.

Toto whimpered. "We can't sleep just yet, Toto," said Dorothy, stroking his head. "Soon, though."

"Do you have a plan?" asked Lucas.

"Not really," she said. "But there's only one witch I haven't met, right? The one that wanted to sacrifice me in the first place. I've got a bad feeling that I'm not going to be able to leave this town until I deal with her. And the longer I wait, the more tired I'll be."

"That doesn't sound like much of a plan," said Lucas. "That sounds like a good way to get yourself killed."

"I know," said Dorothy. "But it's the best I've been able to come up with." 

*

"Hello, dear," said Glinda. She'd spent a great deal of time raging over her sister's inability to keep her hands on the girl, but in the end the sacrifice had walked herself right into Glinda's temple. How very convenient. She'd even though to bring Roan with her. "It was so kind of you to bring my wayward soldier back to me."

"What?" asked Dorothy.

Whatever response the girl had been expecting, it hadn't been that.  The shock was all over her face as clear as day. Dorothy had walked in full of unconvincing bravado, but even that thin veneer of self-assurance vanished from her as Glinda held her hand out to Roan. Roan, who was Glinda's, and who was currently standing far too close to the corrupted little interloper girl. That had to stop immediately. 

"Remember," said Glinda, snapping her fingers, and Roan lurched away from Dorothy as his memories raced back in. "It's time to remember who you are, my love."

"Lucas? Lucas, please stay with me," begged Dorothy.

"That's not his name," said Glinda calmly. She could gloat, but why bother? Dorothy was already as broken as broken got. The expression on her face as Roan straightened and returned to the side of his rightful master was a glorious thing to see.

Then Dorothy's expression hardened, and her hand went for her gun. 

"Girls," said Glinda. They raised their hands in unison, freezing Dorothy in place so that she could be safely disarmed.

"Wonderful job, girls," said Glinda. She'd spent so much time on them, and the reward she'd reaped was a well-oiled machine. "Now it's time to get ready for the sacrifice."

*

Lucas looked down at her through the bars of her holding cell. Well, Roan looked down at her, and she'd only known him for a few days so she wasn't sure why it was so hard for her to make the transition in her head. Lucas was not a real person. He'd never really existed. Roan was real, and Roan was about to sacrifice her to a hole in reality make the head of his cult happy.

He looked guilty. He'd looked at her with guilt all over his face ever since Glinda had returned his memories, though, and he hadn't lifted a finger to help her in all that time.

 _Don't trust anyone in Silent Hill_ , thought Dorothy. She'd never let anyone get close before, not even before Silent Hill. She couldn't explain why she'd suddenly changed her approach at the worst possible time in the worst possible place.

"You could let me go," she said, tapping the bars of her cell. She wasn't sure exactly how long she had until the ceremony was ready, but it wasn't going to be very much time at all. Glinda had made it quite clear she wanted the ceremony done that night, before the town shifted back over in the morning.

"I can't," said Lucas. No, Roan.

"You have the key, don't you? Is she controlling you? Is her magic running through you right now, stopping you from moving?" asked Dorothy. Roan frowned and looked away from her, and Dorothy sighed. "You could, if you wanted to. It's just that you don't want to."

"You don't understand," said Roan. "You can't understand, you're not from here. She kept this town together for so long, ever since the interlopers tore it apart. She took all of us orphans in when the experiment and the shifts killed our parents. And now she's going to be the one to save us."

"She's going to kill me."

"I'm sorry," said Roan, and he did sound sorry. He sounded absolutely miserable, not that it mattered much to Dorothy. She was going to die anyway.  

"I spent so long wondering why my mother gave me up," said Dorothy. "I used to think about it every day, let it get under my skin. But, in the end, all she was trying to do was help. All she wanted for me was to live a better life. And that's much more than Glinda ever wanted for anyone in this town."

He flinched. "You can't say things like that. She's our only chance at salvation, at purifying this place."

"She's a monster," said Dorothy. Now that she'd been here for long enough, now that she understood what was going on, she was starting to be able to feel the place. Some power she got from killing East, or from the piece of South that Karen had taken to save her, or maybe it was something that belonged only to her, something she'd been born with after reality had split open around her mother. Who could say why exactly, but she could feel the rhythms of the Dark World now, and she could feel her sister witches. All their power came from the same place. All of it came from that bleeding nightmare world that thrust itself into the town every night.

"She's not going to stop it," said Dorothy. "It's where her power comes from, and she's not giving that up. She's not trying to stop it, she's trying to _feed_ it."

"You don't understand her."

"No," said Dorothy. "You're the one who doesn't understand." 

*

Dorothy hoped she would at least die quickly.  They pulled her down to the core of the temple, dragging her to the pile of wood where they were going to set her on fire. She hoped, but she was pretty sure fire wasn't a pleasant way to die.

Still, hope was all she could do, at least until she felt Roan behind her, felt him slip the metal of her gun into her coat pocket.  Then it was all she could do not to cry with relief. She kept her face even, though. She spared one glance towards Roan, but his eyes were straight forward, staring at Glinda where she stood in front of her alter in blinding white.

She was chanting, something Dorothy shouldn't have understood but she did, a little. Glinda was calling the Dark World, calling it forward, begging it to weave itself tighter into the fabric of their world.

Silent Hill was only the start. Sooner or later, if Glinda had her way, her power would reign over the whole world.

"Please don't do this," said Dorothy, trying for one last plea. Glinda ignored it.

Maybe Dorothy should have tried harder. But she only had the one moment, right when the girls on either side of her dropped her arms so Glinda could take control of her, and in that one moment before Glinda overwhelmed her she had gun out and pulled the trigger. She wasn't the best shot, but at such close range she didn't have to be. The bullet went through Glinda's skull right above her right eye.

Glinda looked shocked, but she didn't fall immediately. "You think that can kill me?" she asked, blood sliding down her face, staining her veil.

"I know, only a witch can kill a witch," said Dorothy. "But I've already killed one."

Glinda was the strongest of the Order in Silent Hill, but that didn't make her immortal. Dorothy fired again, and again, until she was out of bullets, and Glinda screamed, but it was too late for her. She'd lost control of her ceremony.

"A new reality is coming," said Dorothy. "You'd better get ready for the shift."

She couldn't remember anything after that.

*

Dorothy woke to the light of the mid-morning sun, her face pressed against the warm asphalt of Silent Hill's main street.  It was a beautiful clear day, with not a wisp of fog in sight. She looked around, and while the town looked rough, shabby and broken down from disuse, it also looked refreshingly normal.  No strange shadows, no bleeding walls, no warning sirens. But as abandoned as it looked, there were still people in it. She could feel them, even though she was the only one awake so far. But otherwise, it was a normal town, one she was confident she could leave any time she liked.  

Toto nuzzled her hand. "Okay, Toto, I've got an important job for you," said Dorothy.  "Do you think you can help me find Jane and Lucas?"  

Toto barked, and it sounded like a very confident bark to Dorothy.  

"Good boy," said Dorothy.  "Let's get started. I want to get home to Kansas as soon as possible." 


End file.
